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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24149086">Falling Up</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kannika/pseuds/Kannika'>Kannika</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Firefly, Serenity (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Multi, Post-Serenity (2005), River-centric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 19:09:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,125</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24149086</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kannika/pseuds/Kannika</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>River doesn't understand so much of her new life aboard Serenity, surrounded by grief and new beginnings starting without her.</p><p>But she's trying.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hoban Washburne/Zoë Washburne, Inara Serra &amp; River Tam, Jayne Cobb &amp; River Tam, Kaylee Frye/Simon Tam, Malcolm Reynolds &amp; River Tam, Malcolm Reynolds/Inara Serra, River Tam &amp; Everyone, River Tam &amp; Simon Tam</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Falling Up</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Firefly is still one of the greatest shows ever. I still quote so much of it and honestly when I write I aspire to have characters and relationships as good as these.</p><p>This contains some pieces of canon from the comics and behind-the-scenes interviews and a bunch of my own headcanons all jumbled together. I haven't read all the comics, but I thought the backstory parts for Book and Inara were great and they stuck with me.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When River dreams, it's that she can run again. </p><p>It’s about the only thing she misses aboard Serenity— the wide-open spaces, the air that hasn’t been recycled and stripped of scent and taste and history. She loves Serenity but she knows with each step that the things beneath her feet are made of things killed and pounded out of a forge to make a new thing.</p><p>Most people dream of flying. Her dreams were never of flying. They were always of running. She’s never even thought of flying because that would be illogical. She’s felt the gravity pulling at her feet since she first began to move.</p><p>(Maybe that’s why she’s so wrong. She can feel the weight of an entire world in her body. Sometimes it’s comforting. Sometimes it’s crushing. She feels like she can’t stand.)</p><p>She runs. She runs and runs and in her mind’s eye she can create it, the world stretching out before her, endless and flat and empty, no accusing eyes or probing hands or dead people. (Dead because of her.) She can just move, and when she moves the gravity lessens its hold round her ankles, the spinning of the earth is swept away in her lack of breath, and the sky really is as endless as the scientists say it is.</p><p>(She’s innately aware that normal people do not need to be in their minds to be safe.)</p><p>(She’s even more aware that when her mind is safe, it’s a trick.)</p><p>------------------------</p><p>Zoe doesn’t speak to her. Not that River wants her to. Her eyes don’t scream at her like most people do (sadness, she feels, not the abstract concept but the real thing, and in Zoe’s eyes she is swept away in it) but her mouth is always in a thin line, lips pursed so tight the pink is invisible. </p><p>“You’re trying to keep yourself from feeling,” she says when Zoe is trying to get to the other end of the ship without running into her, a feat that River has calculated will only work 54.6% of the time. Serenity is not a big place, no matter how much bigger it feels now. Zoe should know this but it doesn’t register.</p><p>Zoe has lines around her eyes, not from smiles like Wash (it hurts, it hurts, she didn’t want this—) but from sorrow. From a life too full of struggle not to have left a mark somewhere. She smiles now and the lines are like canyons. “It’s a survival technique, River. I have to keep going.”</p><p>For the life in her stomach. But River knows not to say that— one of the few things that she can keep her cursed tongue from spitting out. If she doesn’t know that, though, then her answer makes no sense. Survival? “You’re healed.”  </p><p>The smile disappears. She’s screaming— <i>she doesn’t even understand, she doesn’t feel anything, how could we go through so much lost Wash for this it isn’t her fault just an accident just an accident—</i> wrestling with her own mind, and she pushes it down with effort. The sentiment is still there, though, in the clipped words: “This isn’t a wound, River. You can’t see it heal. And it’s going to be a long time before it does.” </p><p>(Another thing River should understand that she doesn’t. Another thing she will never have because she can’t love like Zoe. It would destroy her.)</p><p>--------------------</p><p>River has a new game: <i>how far can I push before the thoughts become the words?</i></p><p>Jayne is the easiest. By fear, by anger, by goading— it all comes spilling out, all of it honest. Jayne doesn’t care. He hates her, and he tells her; she freaks him out, and he’s quick to grab for a weapon. It’s straightforward. Simple. So’s Kaylee. She doesn’t like to hide things, and if there is darkness in her after everything they’ve seen it’s too small to bother with. She has nothing to hide. </p><p>The rest of them are layers beneath the earth. (No— they buried themselves, because it hurt less to smother than to breathe air they don’t think they deserve. It hurt less to suffocate than risk someone else choking them.) The harder she digs, the harder it gets to pry thoughts loose, but they don’t talk so the only way she can learn is by prying. </p><p>They are deep and she is afraid of what she finds. She finds fingers digging into throats gasping for air, needles in arms that don’t want them, hearts full of lust and sin. She hears prayers that go into empty space because they are not heartfelt and heartfelt prayers that will go unanswered because that’s not the way it works. She finds things she’s not meant to find, but she can’t unhear them or unknow them and neither can the person they belong to. That’s just how it is. </p><p>She’s full of secrets and words and people long dead and they are all so powerful and so important she wants to tear open her skin and pour them out. No more lies. No more ghosts. No more eyes that hold no mercy or hands that hold too tight or touches that long to be something more. She could do that. </p><p>She tells none of it. It is her punishment for all that she has done, bearing it in silence, screaming into walls when the need to speak becomes too great. </p><p>(The gods are cruel. A boat full of hiders, and they send a digger.)</p><p>--------------------</p><p>Occasionally, River finds it in her to sing. She doesn’t know where the words come from any more than anything else, but she’ll take the words as they come to her and the notes. She doesn’t think she’s any good, but Simon likes it. Simon is a good sport. </p><p>Jayne isn’t. Which is half of why she chooses to be near him when she does it.</p><p>She raises her voice on a high note that asks to be louder, clearer.</p><p>Jayne grunts. “Could you be crazy a little quieter?”</p><p>She stops— the feeling is gone, and she doesn’t know how to get it back. “You don’t want quiet. You want silent. Things disappear in silence.” Jayne knows this already. He knows silence. He knows it means death. That’s why he shouts. So when he dies there will be echoing silence. </p><p>“Even better. Shut up.” </p><p>She focuses on him as he lifts the metal bar high over his head and back down— a pointless exercise, Jayne doesn’t feel it or need it. His mind churns, fast like Serenity’s engine: <i>stupid girl, what’s she even doing down here anyways, why does she have to be so creepy when she watches, why is she even still here. </i></p><p>“Why are you here?” River asks. </p><p>Jayne exhales and rolls his eyes back— like he should have known she wouldn’t listen to him. “Because this is the only place big enough for this junk.”</p><p>River studies further, pushes into his memories. He’s here because he was on a job and Mal found him, offered him more money not to kill him than the others were. He shot them, the people that hired him, and he felt only a short sting because he’d killed so many, what were two more? And he told himself it was just for the money but River sees how he views Mal. With respect. He wasn’t a soldier and doesn’t give a damn about honor but he respects it in someone else. Mal reminds him of the cowboys he read about that killed but felt bad about it, that prayed, that had moms they loved from up front instead of through letters three weeks delayed because she didn’t know where they were. Everything fast, everything loud, everything fleeting. That’s what he wanted. </p><p>He’s given up on it. Mal is closest he can find and half the time he wants to shoot him, too, just to see how much of it’s an act and how much of Jayne is in him. </p><p>“You fall asleep?” Jayne grunts.</p><p>“Perhaps <i>you’re</i> asleep,” River replies, because it’s interesting to see his mind flare up. “Perhaps the whole verse is asleep and you’re the only one awake.”</p><p>Jayne gives up on the bar and sits up. “That’d make me God, then,” he says, standing, shrugging, baring a smile at her that says if she hadn’t knocked him out cold before he’d have already slugged her. “And my verse would have a lot more whores and a lot less crazy girls followin’ me.” </p><p>---------------------</p><p>Book’s absence from the world is terribly loud.</p><p>He was never much of a talker while he was on Serenity but the few things that he said resonated inside of her core. Little things— like his faith, like his belief that she was not a bad person. She could see inside of his head, and he was running but he seemed to have outpaced it. He believed in redemption and salvation because if he didn’t, there was nowhere left for him to turn. </p><p>(He has done bad things— killed men, betrayed them, destroyed them. But in all his time on the ship he never called Inara a whore or Jayne a psychopath or Mal a sociopath or her a witch or demon or devil child or albatross. Never even thought it. What is he?) </p><p>It scares her. Terrifies her. More than most things. Noah’s Ark is problematic. It fits with nothing. If it happened, how is it possible? Why? If it’s possible, if there is a being she can’t see or feel or know but he knows her, things don’t make sense anymore. All the science in the verse is useless without reason, and science and math and other solid things are all she actually understands. </p><p>There’s another thing. Book talks about judging. His god can see into her mind, into its caverns, its holes, its gaping abnormalities and mistakes. He can read her mind and will weigh her worth and judge her. She cannot understand his judgment of her or predict it. Maybe her intentions were good. (As good as a child’s could be.) Maybe, like Simon said, things weren’t her fault. Maybe. Maybe not. She’s done terrible things, things she should be punished for. She took Simon from his home. She took freedom from Mal. She took Wash from Zoe. Bad things, bad things she’s done. </p><p>(She could not take faith from Book. Maybe one less bad thing, maybe not.)</p><p>--------------------</p><p>Inara is brushing her hair. </p><p>River closes her eyes and leans back and into it because Inara is good at what she does. Every brush stroke is gentle, measured, going from the roots to the end in an even stroke that she can barely feel. It’s calming, to just sit there and enjoy it, and the thoughts are just a little quieter. She’s grateful. Inara probably has no idea what she’s doing but this is a reprieve from the constant screams. </p><p>“You have such beautiful hair, River,” Inara murmurs. Oddly enough, she’s telling the truth. River’s hair is oily and she and Simon don’t really have the time to take care of it but Inara thinks it’s beautiful anyways. She thinks most things are beautiful, River finds, including her. She’s kind like that. </p><p>But she’s so sad. And there’s something so far deep inside of her that she’s hiding it from herself. Maybe River could push through and find it, but she doesn’t want to right now. Inara is such a kind person. Any secret that breaks her River doesn’t want to find. </p><p>“Thank you,” River says, because it’s the right thing to say. Her attention catches on one of the dresses at the end of Inara’s bed. It has beads on the lower half, tiny plates of glass that probably cost a fortune. A gift from one of her clients, River sees. The beads make tiny, soft sounds as they sway with the nearly imperceptible drift of Serenity gliding through space. Like tiny wind chimes. It’s too delicate for the metal behind it and the blood behind that and the nothingness behind that.  </p><p>“What are you thinking, <i>mei-mei?”</i>  Inara asks. She’s one of the few people who says that. The others are too scared.</p><p>“Why don’t you stay anywhere?” </p><p>Inara’s hands freeze in her hair, for just a second. River regrets asking it. It brings Inara’s secret close to her mind before she shoves it back. All River can hear is <i>I don’t want to hurt anyone.</i> Not the violent hurt like River knows, the softer but much more accurate hurt of heartbreak. She would know that hurt more than anyone else. River can feel how her mind and Mal’s twist around each other and it’s closer to two wolves circling each other than two lovers. They are full of so much hurt. </p><p>“I love Serenity too much,” Inara says quietly. And then her hands still. She sees the dress River is staring at. “Do you like it?” </p><p>“It’s beautiful.”</p><p>River can feel Inara smiling. “Do you want to try it on?” </p><p>For a second she hesitates, but then she hears it, clearly in Inara’s mind: <i>I wish I could have done this with my daughter.</i> It’s so mournful and deep that River actually cries out. There’s… loss. She can feel an hourglass winding down and it’s too late. River is the closest she has. River and Kaylee. She wishes she could have more. </p><p>Inara pets her hair. “River? Are you okay, hon? Do you need me to get Simon?” </p><p>River shakes her head. Lets Inara wrap her up in a hug because she’s shaking violently enough her teeth chatter.</p><p>“You’re like my mom,” she blurts before she can stop herself. “Only you’re not afraid to touch me.”</p><p>Inara sighs, a little wistfulness in it, before she strokes River’s hair like it’s silk instead of detached oily strings. She doesn’t say anything, but River hears <i>you deserve better. </i></p><p>Inara <i>is</i> better. She’s light and gentleness and kindness and grace and River wants to pretend, for a little longer.       </p><p>-----------</p><p>Serenity is alive. She breathes and speaks to her. She hurts and screams like a dog. River likes to walk barefoot because she can feel it when she walks across the grates and they cut into the soles of her feet. She feels the will there, the living straining breathing mass that is Serenity, as she accepts them with all of their faults.  </p><p>The others don’t understand. Serenity understands. Serenity knows everything that goes on inside of her belly. She sees everything. She hears the words in the silence and feels the malice in blank stares. She knows what will happen to all of them— <i>that’s because she’s a death trap,</i> she knows and she’s sorry but she can do nothing. Neither of them can do anything. The others aren’t there to understand.</p><p>No, Kaylee understands. Kaylee picks up a strawberry and her eyes focus on it and she sees it for what it is— precious, fragile, life-giving, more valuable than bullets or gold. And she knows Serenity is alive. She strokes her belly and coos and talks to her about what she’s feeling and it’s okay baby, it’s all over now, you’re hurt but you’ll heal. You’ll get better and it’ll be okay.</p><p>But then she moves on, smiling like normal people do. That’s probably Kaylee’s only fault. She sees the truth but she denies it. She is able to quiet the voices in her head when for River it only makes them scream louder. </p><p>(She tells herself it makes her a bad person to hate Kaylee.)</p><p>Right now, if she closes her eyes, Kaylee is like a beacon. She is light and life. She is energy, but quieter and more fragile. She can feel her from across the ship. </p><p>And she is with Simon. Simon, who has been River’s light since long before she was crazy enough to actually need it, who was always there like her parents were supposed to be. He’s not perfect enough she hasn’t felt the times he forces his mind blank because it’s better than hostility that she would see. She knows he has thoughts like <i>she’s so much better than I am.</i> It’s sweet, because she’s so not. She’s crazy. That’s worse. </p><p>Right now, they are laughing. And she can see, if they continue, there will be another. A someone with Kaylee’s laugh and Simon’s brilliance, someone for him to sweep up in his arms and call his new light. </p><p>She buries her head in her hands and screams over it. Because it <i>hurts.</i></p><p>--------------------</p><p>“What are you learning about my ship these days?”</p><p>That’s the way Mal talks to her, now. She’s still trying to figure out if that means he doesn’t think she’s crazy anymore, or just acknowledged her crazy. But it’s something new, either way, and she can play along. “She doesn’t like Shadow. Too much ash. It’s wrong.”</p><p>She flickers into Mal and back out— memory of green, of green engulfed in fire and turning black, smoke choking him and chaining him and forcing him into a war he will lose. Mal knows. Mal always knows. </p><p>“Can’t say I know much ‘bout Shadow myself,” he says. </p><p><i>Liar,</i> River thinks, but since she thinks it she doesn’t say it. Or maybe she does and Mal ignores her. Maybe they will ignore each other’s crazy, work together like that. </p><p>He takes a quick breath. “But we have to go down there to drop off a load of ammo for Badger. So.”</p><p>“You don’t want to go.” Neither does she. </p><p>“It’s not all wishes and wills, little albatross.”</p><p>She doesn’t understand why he keeps calling her that. Albatross— cursed bird, used to warn sailors of coming storms. They believed it brought the storm so they shot it and when it bled out on the deck they tried to bring it back but they couldn’t. It didn’t want to hurt them but it did. It’s a fitting name— not like <i>mei-mei,</i> “little sister”, the only one she’s tried to be a sister to was Simon and look how well she did at that— but Mal doesn’t say the word like a curse. At first it was an irony. Then it was an acknowledgement. He knew what he brought aboard. She felt his mind the first moment she woke up and it said <i>what the hell are we doing with this thing she’s a time bomb run run run run run</i> and she screamed because he was right and no one else could see it. Simon hadn’t run from her, he had run to her, and she knew he regretted it but he was too good to say it. </p><p><i>This is what it would be like to have a daughter,</i> Mal thinks, a quick slip, and she buries her head in her hands and screams to drown it out. She doesn’t deserve to hear this. She doesn’t deserve it.</p><p>(He’s right. This is what it means to have a family— to keep secrets, to hurt and heal in the same breath, to think things you will take into the black and tell no one, and you can justify everything with “it was for them”. And it makes everything okay. She doesn’t understand.)</p><p>--------------------</p><p>River lies on the floor and closes her eyes and opens her mind. She can feel everything through Serenity’s veins here. She becomes one with the ship here, and it’s comforting because machines don’t bleed the way people do. She feels their fear and anxiety and pain the same way she does everything else, deep inside of her, but Serenity cannot collapse from the weight of the memories she holds. Machines can be fixed. Eventually.</p><p>Kaylee hums in the engine room, in Serenity’s heart. It’s fitting. She hates Kaylee for her optimism and her ability to drown out the voices but it’s not real hate, it’s jealousy. Kaylee is strong enough to keep going even when she understands too much or doesn’t understand enough. Kaylee is the light in this bunch of criminals, the one who plays ball with the crazy girl, the one who Simon loves and needs. She… maybe dislike is a better word. She cannot hate, even in jealousy, someone who makes her analytical brother laugh and smile like he does. </p><p>Inara is in her shuttle— a part of Serenity and yet not. The others pretend to fight Serenity but they don’t try to leave; Inara has. She runs and she pushes them away and when she comes back it’s not her idea. That’s something, at least, that River can understand and admire her for. If River was a good person, then when she realized she would hurt Simon she would have run. She would have knocked him out and went her own way and never saw him again because it would have been better to wonder than to know. That’s what Inara thinks. She thinks, <i>if I can run and make them not care I won’t hurt the only people I want not to.</i> She’s wrong. River still remembers the longing for Simon when she was locked up, how she kept thinking “it will get better” and it only got worse. For both of them, if they try to protect someone by leaving, they will not be strong enough because it will be too late.</p><p>Jayne is in the other shuttle— the one that very rarely ever actually leaves. Not separate but there in the way Inara is, although he likes to think so. He’s used to shoving people away, shoving emotions that get you killed down for a more appropriate time that doesn’t come. He didn’t come here for any reason but the money, and he boasts that’s the reason he’s here at all, but River can feel more clearly that it’s too late to pretend. He plays ball with Kaylee and he bantered with Wash and he respects the captain’s decisions when they’re not life-threateningly stupid. He can pretend he can leave, but he’s never tried, and he never will. He’s here. He can pretend he’s just the muscle because that’s what the heroes in his stories were but muscle wouldn’t humor girls he can’t sleep with. He’s more.</p><p>There is a bloodstain on her neck, like a bullet hole. It’s there still and it will always be there no matter how hard Zoe and Mal scrub at it. She feels it like a scab that will never heal, a broken bone that was not set right. Wash is there still. She sees his ghost, and she screams “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” but the ghost doesn’t scream back. It asks her to watch over the little one that will have Zoe’s skin but his eyes and she will, she <i>swears</i> she will stop being bad luck if it makes the ghost smile and the baby girl be alright.</p><p>Zoe is there, too, quiet and composed in her grief in a way that River has never managed. She doesn’t know what she carries within her yet. She doesn’t know about the ghost following her and watching. All she knows is that she must carry on because that’s what she has always done, because she survived before Wash with only the captain and so she believes she can do it again. She’s wrong. She’ll survive, but it will be in spite of the loss and it will be incomplete. River can never hope to be forgiven for driving them to that planet where they lost Wash, and out of everything she knows she doesn’t know how to heal people the way her brother does, but she at least forces herself out of Zoe’s mind so she can grieve unobserved. It’s all she can do, for now. It’s more than she ever thought she would ever be able to do.</p><p>The other bloodstain, the one she tries not to think about, should not be on Serenity but is. It is most clearly inside of Kaylee, in Serenity’s heart, in a way that makes her confused and afraid again because that would mean he was right. That one is her fault, too, but it is easier to deal with because there is no ghost. Maybe it’s because it wasn’t her fault. Maybe it’s because Book was so far fighting his own ghosts there was nothing left to become one. Maybe it’s because he was the only one on this boat that meant it when he talked about forgiveness and he moved on to give her peace. Again, maybe he was right. Either way, the scar is there but the scab is not. The ghost is not and she is relieved and guilty for the relief (it’s selfish) but the silence stretches in her mind when she lingers over the scar and it’s a peaceful thing to find even for a moment. </p><p>And there is Mal, Latin for bad, rebel fighting in a war that only he is still fighting. He is still fighting, not because fighting is the only thing he knows how to do but because if the war is still going he hasn’t lost yet. ‘Lost’ is an ugly word but instead of running from it Mal fights it. It’s naïve but admirable. She knows that is why Inara loves him, because she embraced lost a long time ago as a reason for everything she does, good or bad. Everyone else did. Mal is still fighting because he <i>does not lose.</i> </p><p>Mal is harder to find, because he is in the head of the ship, guiding her, keeping her course, but he is not <i>there.</i> Mal is in her skin, in Serenity’s skin, in every pulsing light and every purr and every scar. He is inside of them, all of them, so concrete that he has no being anywhere else. He is the one who brought Serenity back from the dead and gave her her wings back and she is forever grateful. He is the one who gathered them all together on this boat and none of them will ever say it but they are grateful. He is the one who chose not to throw her out long ago and chooses every day to keep her even if she is broken and she is grateful too. </p><p><i>Family,</i> he thinks now. <i>Home. Just keep flying and we’ll be alright. We’ll find somewhere we can be alright.</i> But he doesn’t mean alright as in ‘give up this life of crime’. He only means forward into something new where they can find the reason they’re all on this boat, the reason they stay with him, the reason for everything he’s done and will do. He’s looking for reason, too, she realizes, the same way she is. They all are. She’s not the only one who doesn’t understand, she’s the only one for whom it eats it her alive.</p><p>“River?”</p><p>Simon. She hadn’t heard him walking, had been aware of him moving but hadn’t realized it was to find her. (It’s always to find her.) She opens her eyes again and he’s knelt over the top of her smiling. It’s good to see him smile, but usually it’s Kaylee that makes it now. (She doesn’t hate her. She doesn’t she doesn’t she doesn’t.)</p><p>“You don’t understand,” she tells him. He doesn’t frown but blinks at her in confusion. </p><p>“Don’t understand what, <i>mei-mei?”</i> He asks. He sits instead of kneeling and she sits up too. He does, somehow, understand her. He can’t fix her but it feels like he knows what’s going on in her mind better than she does. </p><p>“Why you’re here. Why I’m here. Why I’m like this or why Kaylee is or what the verse is or where we’re going—"</p><p>“Hey! Hey, hey, just breathe, River, it’s okay.” He puts a hand on her shoulder and leans forward, and like he’s pressed a switch, like she’s still Serenity and it could be that easy, she finds her calm. She can breathe. She knows how to do that. She can do that. “You’re okay. Slow down and tell me what you’re thinking.”</p><p>She wants to cry— she’s still causing problems, she’s still being a burden, he came to be nice and look where it got him again. “You don’t understand. <i>I</i> don’t understand. Why don’t the voices scream at you when you don’t understand?”</p><p>Simon smiles again, suddenly. It’s his <i>you dummy</i> smile, the smile that means this is something he can actually make better. “Because I understand enough. You do, too, you just don’t feel it.”</p><p>It’s a strange answer. River doesn’t understand it, either, but Simon is wearing the smile still and he can help, he can help her understand this. “What do you understand?”</p><p>Simon takes a deep breath. “Well… I don’t know the questions about the verse or existence or anything like that. But I know you’re here because I got you out, and I’m here because you’re here, and that we’re going… somewhere safe.”</p><p>“But you don’t know where.”</p><p>“I don’t need to know where. I trust Mal.”</p><p>“But you don’t know that he’s right.” </p><p>“Trust is given without knowing, River. That’s why it’s so precious.” He moves the hair that has fallen into her face. “And really, I just know that it’ll be okay, even if we don’t end up the right place next time or the next or the next. I don’t know how I know but I do, and that’s enough for me.” </p><p>Faith. That’s what it is in Simon’s voice that makes him feel warm and strong and reliable. She doesn’t know what it’s faith in— even he doesn’t know— but it’s inside of all of them. They have faith in their gods, their paths, their choices, their captain, their ship. Her. They have faith in her, that she’s not just crazy and dangerous and that she’s with them for a reason even if they don’t understand it yet. </p><p>Another thing she doesn’t understand. But if they can live with the not knowing, if they can keep trusting people whose pasts and minds they don’t know, if they can believe in things that defy reason and not think they’re crazy, if they can smile after the scars and suffocating and all they have been through, surely she can too.</p><p>She smiles at Simon and nods and he helps her to her feet. She can still feel Serenity in her bones, still feel everyone else, and she still doesn’t understand but she can breathe and walk to the dining hall and the questions dull from a scream so she can hear her heartbeat. Faith. Faith, if nothing else, in Simon and Serenity. She can walk, and she can hear her heartbeat.</p><p>It’s a start.</p>
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